WHILE
the mysticism of the Middle Ages was expanding in delicate spires of
Gothic architecture, the Inca's empire was exposing its heart of gold
to the blaze of a tropical sun. Their only similarity is that a
shadowy veil, half history, half legend, floats between us and them
both. But the gold shines through, and the veil cannot conceal its
brilliancy.

Once
upon a time there was a garden of pleasure where flowers of gold
opened from silver stalks, some full blown, others in close golden
bud. Upon the walls crept strange insects and snails, so perfectly
counterfeited in gold "that they wanted nothing but motion."
Even the trees and the paths were of gold. Birds of gold perched upon
golden boughs, their heads thrown back in silent song, and upon
silver leaves gold butterflies poised in the sunlight upon their
little golden feet. Hummingbirds of gold sipped imaginary honey from
long, golden flower-bells. The old chronicler, Cieza de Leon, says
that one garden "was artificially sown with golden maize, the
stalks, as well as the leaves and cobs being of that metal; ...they
were so well planted that even in a high wind they were not torn up;
and besides all this they had more than twenty golden sheep with
their lambs, and the shepherds with their slings and hooks to watch
them, all made of the same metal." Near by were vast heaps of
gold and silver, waiting to be wrought into wonderful shapes.

The
Inca ate within gold-lined walls, sitting "commonly on a stool
of massive gold set on a large, square plate of gold which served for
a pedestal." He ate from gold dishes rare viands from distant
provinces, prepared in gold pots and kettles in a kitchen supplied
with piles of golden fagots! He bathed in cisterns of gold in water
conducted through golden pipes from distant springs. Francisco Lopez
says: "Nay, there was nothing in all that empire (the most
flourishing of the whole world) whereof there was not a counterfeit
in pure gold."

As
hunger could not be satisfied with gold, it was valued only for its
shining beauty, esteemed by the Incas' subjects only as a symbol of
the Sun, those "tears which the Sun has wept." They
naturally belonged to him. His worshippers even cast them into lakes,
mirrors in which he looks upon his own reflected glory, and "sinks
at last still gazing on it."

The
greatest of all Sun-Temples was Coricancha — the Ingot of Gold —
where every implement in use, even to spades and rakes of the garden,
was made of gold.

Huayna
Ccapac had learned from the god Uiracocha that a superior people
would conquer the Incas and introduce a new religion. They would come
after the reign of twelve kings; and "In me," he said, "the
number of twelve kings is completed."

Oracles
had predicted their coming. And what was more significant, the great
oracle of Rimac, "nothwithstanding its former readiness of
speech, was become silent!" Omens had foreshadowed them. A
brilliant comet "struck Atahualpa with such a dump of melancholy
in his spirits that he remained almost insensible." A royal
eagle pursued by hawks fell into the market-place of Cuzco and died.
Great earthquakes shattered the shore, and tides did not keep their
usual course. A thunderbolt fell in the Inca's own palace. Strange
apparitions faltered in the air, terrible to behold. The Moon, mother
of Incas, had three halos; the first blood-red, the second blackish,
inclining to green, the third like mist or smoke.

Atahualpa's
atrocities had come to pass. For the first time civil war had
decimated the empire of the Lover of the Poor, the Deliverer of the
Oppressed. Such conduct had earned its reward. Was it not to be
expected that the dawn-heroes of fair complexion, absent for a
season, should reappear? Their vengeance was commissioned by the
Light-god.

What
greater dramatic climax ever focused? What authority was ever more
solidly founded? What identity of hero-gods more tangibly proven? A
first appearance which further facts continued to corroborate.

II

Lured
by rumors of a descendant of the Sun in a city of gold, the first
lean, poor adventurer, worn with uncertainty and suffering, stepped
upon the shore of Peru. Pedro de Candia was his name, who, having
burned ten cities, had dedicated in expiation ten lamps to the
Virgin. His "coat of mail reached to his knees, his helmet of
the best and bravest sort, his sword girt by his side. He took a
target of steel in his left hand, and in his right a wooden cross a
yard and a half long," advancing toward the Indians. Two fierce
jaguars, "beholding the cross," fawned upon him and cast
themselves at his feet. Taking courage at the sight, he laid it upon
their backs and dared to stroke their heads. By virtue of that symbol
a miracle had happened. Pedro de Candia and the Indians were equally
dumbfounded.

They
followed him to the temples and palaces furnished and plated with
gold and silver, all awed to silence, he at such magnificence in an
undiscovered country, they at the sight of the tall, fair man, whose
long beard hung down over his iron dress; all were convinced by this
first encounter, the Indians of the divinity of the Spaniards, the
Spaniards of God's patronage. "Being abundantly satisfied with
what he had seen, he returned with all joy imaginable to his
companions, taking much larger steps back than his gravity allowed
him in his march toward the people."

Eye-witnesses
have described the Spaniards' first glimpse of Atahualpa, the red
fringe shining on his forehead, when Hernando de ,Soto, the most
daring of all Pizarro's followers caracoled upon his miraculous beast
into the very lap of the dignified monarch. They feasted and drank
chicha from goblets of gold which young girls presented to them,
sitting upon seats of gold like the emperor's own. Two historians
were present "who with their quipus (knots) made certain ciphers
describing... all the passages of that audience."

In
Cajamarca, the Country of Frost, Atahualpa returned the visit. He
came in full regalia, facing the pomp of a gorgeous sunset, and the
Spaniards, "brandishing their pennants toward the flaring west,
saluted with a great shout the Setting of the Sun!"

First
came multitudes of people clearing the way of stones and sweeping the
road, then singers and dancers in three divisions, many richly
dressed courtiers, and the guards, divided into four squadrons of
eight thousand men, one before, one on each side of the Inca, and one
in the rear. High on the shoulders of distinguished chiefs he rode
upon a golden litter lined with brilliant feathers. His proud head,
too large for his body, was encircled by the red fringe hanging above
his wild and bloodshot eyes. Atahualpa, that courageous fiend who
bragged that no bird flew in the air, no leaf fluttered on a tree
without his permission, who though ransomed with a roomful of gold
was taken prisoner in the midst of his own army by a handful of
insolent adventurers, baptized in the Christian faith "Don
Juan," bound to a post, and throttled like a common criminal!
Pizarro put himself into mourning.

The
legend which had lured the Spaniards was proven true: that the land
of a powerful king lay toward the south, where immeasurable treasure
was amassed. It took a month to melt up the gold plaques and plates,
brackets and moldings, statues of men, animals and plants, drinking
and eating utensils, jars and jewelry of all sorts that filled
Atahualpa's room of ransom.

A
huge quantity of gold, carried by eleven thousand llamas and intended
for the ransom, never arrived. It is said to lie buried near Jauja,
and is only one of the countless masses of hidden treasure, both
along the coast and in the mountains, even into Ecuador. The Spanish
messengers who were carried in hammocks to inspect that caravan on
its journey toward Cajamarca were almost blinded by a mountain
seeming to shine from base to crest with gold. The eleven thousand
llamas had laid themselves down to rest.

III

So
they had come at last, the very image of the god himself, strange
little Uiracochas in beards and ruffs; worthy of worship indeed, for
they let loose thunder and lightning, the proper arms of the Sun,
from instruments held in their hands, and rode about on amazing
beasts. (The Indians' fear of horses persisting to this day, they are
used only as infantry.) Were the Uiracochas insensible of hunger and
thirst; did they need sleep after toil and repose after labor? Were
they made of flesh and bones, or had they incorruptible bodies like
those of the Sun and the Moon?

So
the grisly conquerors came, half heroes, half wild beasts, who did
not grow exhausted by fighting, nor discouraged by wounds and the
horrors of mountain-sickness.

So
they came, these few poor adventurers who fell upon a roomful of gold
given them by a people in ransom for the sovereign-deity whom this
handful of men had imprisoned. Miracles in their favor seemed to
spring up at each step; and madly stimulated, the peaks of the
cordillera blazing above them, their imaginations limitless, they
strode through the empire in the guise of gods and scraped the sacred
gold from the City of the Sun. They ripped the plate from the walls
of its temples. They destroyed the idols. It is said that the Jesuits
had to employ thirty persons for three days to break up a single
carved stone huaco (idol). They dug up the treasures buried with the
dead and pillaged the towns, and they brought back to greedy European
sovereigns news of a land of gold. Having, as it seemed to them,
found infinitely, they hoped infinitely and infinitely dared.

The
glittering career of the Indies had begun. No empire was ever won in
so grandiose a way; no empire ever so monstrously destroyed.

Wolfenbüttel-Spanish
Map, circa 1529 One
of the first maps to show Pizarro's discoveries along the Peruvian
coast.

IV

Picturesque
are the figures of the two great conquerors, Francisco Pizarro and
Diego de Almagro, lean and tireless soldiers, "either of whom,
single, could break through a body of a hundred Indians," who
amassed a fortune, the greatest that had been known in many ages,
wasted it in wars with each other, and died so poor that they were
"buried of mere charity."

They
dressed in the costume of their youth. The marquis "never wore
other than a jerkin of black cloth with skirts down to his ankles,
with a short waist a little below his breast. His shoes were made of
a white cordivant, his hat white, with sword and dagger after the old
fashion. Sometimes upon high days, at the instance and request of his
servants, he wore a cassock lined with martins' furs which had been
sent him from Spain," but his coat of mail was underneath, as
appropriate to his body as its steely sheath to his heart.
Illiterate, greedy, fearless, and proud, wading through blood to
establish the Christian faith, he was murdered at last; and as he
fell, traced in his own blood a cross upon the stone floor, kissed
it, and died.

Then
there was the able monster, Carvajal, who went about accompanied by
three or four negroes to strangle people. He jeered as they did so,
"showing himself very pleasant and facetious at that
unseasonable time." He left behind him a wake of spiked heads of
"traitors" to the king. He wore a Moorish burnous and hens'
feathers twined together in the form of a cross on his hat, bought
masses with emeralds for his soul's repose, and at the age of
eighty-four went to his execution in a basket, saying his prayers in
Latin. "Being come to the place of execution, the people crowded
so to see him that the hangman had not room to do his duty. And
thereupon he called to them and said: 'Gentlemen, pray give the
officer room to do justice.' "